Being good at gratitude

Gratitude is one of the few spiritual/happiness practices that comes naturally to me, plus I love food and cooking, so naturally Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It feels appropriate for Thanksgiving to arrive now, because I’ve been in an almost constant state of gratitude lately. Recently I tweeted: I may be the luckiest girl in […]

Smitten Kitchen cookbook adventures (4)

#5: Slow cooker black bean ragout Apparently a ragout is a main-dish stew (related to the Italian ragu), usually cooked long and slow. Now you know! This is a basic bean dish, probably not that different from one you’d find in any veggie or vegan cookbook, and that’s exactly what I wanted for post-Thanksgiving. It […]

Smitten Kitchen cookbook adventures (3)

#4: Butternut squash and caramelized onion galette This is one of the recipes that immediately hit me with a “Where has this been all my life?” kind of force. I love winter squash, lately I’m obsessed with caramelized onions, and anything that involves expanding my pastry dough repertoire is a fun challenge. I decided to […]

Smitten Kitchen cookbook adventures (2)

Update on the gratin: I baked some delicata squash tonight and pureed a bit of it with some vegetable broth, to put under the leftover gratin. As I expected, it was delicious that way. #3: Kale salad with dried cherries, walnuts, and goat cheese My lackadaisical grocery shopping also interfered with the execution on this […]

Pancakes and cultural traditions

Status updates on Facebook from several friends reminded me that today is Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day. Pondering the distribution of the updates, I noticed that most of them came from the UK, where I celebrated Pancake Day 2005. Prior to that, I wasn’t aware of Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day except as Mardi Gras. […]

Sunset Salad

Clotilde’s Grated Carrots and Beets is a terrific way to try beets (raw or otherwise) if you are a little skeptical about them. But I don’t think it has a very good name; I always look for it under “Beet and Carrot Salad” before I remember that the name in English is a translation from […]